The Tools We Use: CacheFly’s content distribution network

We’re often asked what tools we use everyday for creating and managing Alfred, so we’ll share a few of our favourite tools and services in this post series.

A few years ago, we started using CacheFly as our CDN, or content delivery network. It’s pretty simple, with a CDN, our Alfred resources are copied to servers in useful locations around the world so that when you click the download button, not only is Alfred’s update located physically closer to you (so it’s less likely to be affected by online traffic), it also has high availability.

CacheFly has 100% availability SLA – it doesn’t really get any better than that!

We use CacheFly to host quite a few resources, including the Alfred download zip, website resources, images for emails, the auto update xml and online help files. What’s more, all of these resources are already being distributed using https on a subdomain of Alfred which means no changes are needed when we migrate our websites to https in the next few weeks.

Previously, CacheFly offered subscription plans at fixed prices, but we’ve heard that they’ve started offering a Pay-As-You-Go service with no contracts. In fact, until the end of this week (31st July), they’re offering the PAYG with a 2TB free and some great pricing. [This isn’t an affiliate link or an advert, it’s just because we’ve loved using them!]

So if you’ve been toying around with the idea of hosting your content on a CDN, this would be a great time to try out CacheFly.

 

Alfred 2.7.1 Released: A quick fix and a bonus feature!

We pride ourselves on new releases that are not only feature-filled but also stable and bug-free. In yesterday’s release, a small issue slipped in that affected Python-based workflows specifically. As such, we’re putting out a little update today to ensure that anyone using these workflows can continue to have a pleasant, smooth experience.

This release also gives you a chance to see the new update notifier, which you’ll see as a little tab in the bottom left of Alfred’s box. The feedback we’ve had so far from you is that you’re as happy as we are with this new way of letting you know that there’s a new Alfred update. It’s a much more subtle way to be notified!

Bonus feature: Search & sort your URL History

Did you know that Alfred can remember the URLs you’ve pasted in, for easy access later? You can enable this feature in Alfred’s preferences under Features > Web Search > URLs / History.

While this feature has existed for a long time, we’ve sneaked in a super useful improvement in this release; You can now search and sort your URL history, making it even easier to locate websites you previously opened via Alfred to make it easier to remove results.

To search, use the search box to filter down your results. To sort, click on the URL or Last Accessed column header to re-organise the results.

Once you’ve found the URL you want, select it and hit backspace to remove a single URL, or press the minus symbol that will appear in the bottom right.

 

Alfred 2.7 Released: New Remote features, new update notifier and more

Since Alfred Remote was released in late January, you’ve been creating fantastic Remote pages and workflows. In this new release, we’ve given lots of love to Alfred Remote and workflows, making some great additions to give you even more room to be creative.

We’ve highlighted a few of our favourite new features and improvements in this post, or you can take a look at the change log for the full list of changes in 2.7.

New features for Alfred Remote

You can now easily dispatch key combos from your Remote. For example, create a Remote action for global actions like Hide and Minimise so that you no longer have to remember the hotkeys.

Even better, if you use specialist software with complicated or awkward key combos, you can create a whole page for this app’s hotkeys!

If you connect your Remote to multiple Macs, we’ve added the ability to selectively hide pages. As a result, pages you’ve created to use on your work Mac can be hidden when you connect your Remote to your home Mac, or vice versa. Just right-click the page and choose “Hide from this Mac”. From this same menu or by right-clicking on an action, you can also reset any item icons and labels you’ve changed back to their defaults.

In the list of actions available for Remote, we’ve added the OS X Preference panels, so that you can get to any of the preferences you need to access quickly.

Workflow improvements

We’ve made a number of improvements to workflows, making it easier for our wonderful community of workflow creators to bring their ideas to life. Amongst these, we’ve added flexibility to allow workflow “Run Script” actions and outputs to run concurrently or sequentially, improved reliability for keyboard layout changes and added useful defaults for script queries.

A new update notifier

We’ve changed Alfred’s update notifier so that you no longer get a pop-up on your screen – which was sometimes inconvenient if you were in the middle of a presentation or task, and the timing wasn’t right to update.

Now, Alfred will instead show you that an update is available by adding a little tab to the bottom left of your search box. You’ll be able to carry on with your work until you’re ready to update.

As ever, Alfred remains lightning quick and very lightweight, so once you click the update notification, you’ll be up and running with the latest version in three seconds flat!

How You Use Alfred: Mattias Arrelid, Spotify’s Director of SDK

In this series, we are taking a look at how some users have adopted Alfred in their workplace. They’ll give us a glimpse of how they use Alfred, how they stay productive and what it’s like working for some of the companies we know and love. Last week, we spoke to Ryan Cowles, Happiness Engineer at Automattic.

This week, Mattias Arrelid, Director of the Spotify SDK, shares how he uses Alfred while working on the latest version of Spotify – a service that fuels us with music every day while we work!

Who are you, and what keeps you busy?

My name is Mattias Arrelid, and I’m on a (never-ending) journey to make Spotify infrastructure better™ across all our supported platforms. Lately, this has manifested itself in some much needed tightening of our build & release infrastructure empowering our mobile & desktop apps, as well as some mentoring for one of my teams who is replacing the beating heart that is our player interface that all our features (radio, search etc.) use to play things inside our apps. Exciting times!

On my desk, an Aeropress and some coffee, gloves (yes, this is Sweden), a MacBook Pro Retina 13″ (which may just be replaced this month) and a Cinema Display

How long have you been using Alfred?

That’s one fine, albeit tricky, question right there. Looking through my archived e-mails, I see the first newsletter from you in late February 2011. That said, I was obviously a cheapskate until late 2012 – that’s when I bought the Powerpack. To compensate, I opted in for the Mega Supporter option once I gave you my money…

What aspects of Alfred make your workday more productive?

The workflows, period. Being a big fan of Quartz Composer and scripting in general, it feels pretty damn amazing to have almost limitless functionality at the tip of your fingers at a cost that’s close to zero in terms of setup and complexity.

I don’t even want to think about how much time people spend repeating dull operations in their everyday work-life, when they could be using workflows instead.

Are there any workflows you’ve created or imported that you’d recommend?

Since I’m always running the latest and greatest internal Spotify builds, I’ve constructed a small set of workflows that easily lets me perform common debugging operations. One is starting Spotify with a certain cache and/or username – this has proven itself very valuable when it comes to error reporting, since you always want to prove your bug on a clean install of the app/version combo in question. Combine this with another little script that parses the Info.plist to pick up the version number and place it in the clipboard – I don’t even want to know how many times I’ve used this when reporting/confirming bugs in Jira…

Another workflow I’ve been tinkering around with is one that allows me to easily message/call people using my iPhone. I guess Continuity wasn’t that bad after all, especially combined with the powers of app URIs (that lets you invoke iMessage/Facetime with your contact’s details). I know something similar is available publicly already, but I wanted more granularity in what operation to perform (like FaceTime with or without video).

Another gem that I can’t live without is the IMDb workflow. I love their database, and this workflow gives me the option to just bypass their not-so-nice search box and find the right movie directly from within Alfred itself.

Thanks for answering our questions, Mattias. May Spotify continue to fill our ears with great tunes (and weird back-catalogue tunes too) every day as we work and play!

Want to make your team productive too with the Powerpack? Take a look at our corporate licensing scheme and drop us a line to find out more.

How You Use Alfred: Ryan Cowles, Automattic Happiness Engineer

In this new series, we’ll be taking a look at how some users have adopted Alfred in their workplace. They’ll give us a glimpse of how they use Alfred, how they stay productive and what it’s like working for some of the companies we know and love.

Today, we begin the series in good company, with Ryan Cowles, who is a Happiness Engineer for Automattic, who you’ll also know best as the company behind WordPress.com. I’ve been using WordPress for over 10 years now, so it’s great fun to see people like Ryan are there to keep WordPress users happy!

Who are you, and what keeps you busy?

Hi there! I’m Ryan. I work for Automattic (the company behind WordPress.com, Jetpack, and a whole bunch of other cool stuff). I’m a Happiness Engineer, and most of the work that I do is supporting the Jetpack plugin. This involves answering support requests, beta testing, bug hunting, and most importantly, helping our users get the most out of Jetpack.

The work can vary quite a bit from day-to-day. But, whether I am responding to a support request or troubleshooting a Jetpack bug, Alfred is a staple in my workflow.

How long have you been using Alfred?

I’ve been using Alfred for over two years. I started using it for the basic features; Making quick calculations, launching apps, running a quick Google search, and entering system commands. Those features alone made Alfred an integral part of my work day. But when my coworker Bryan introduced me to workflows, that took my usage to the next level.

What aspects of Alfred make your workday more productive?

I rely heavily on workflows. I have one that boots up my local work environment. Instead of opening apps and URLs one at a time, I simply enter my work’ keyword and everything is open and ready to go. And just for good measure, Alfred also sends me a “Good Morning” message.

Custom searches are another great feature. I use a lot of debugging tools, many of which live at specific URLs. Fumbling through bookmarks, pulling up the page, and then entering a URL each time can get exhausting. So, I avoid that process with custom searches.

I communicate with users via text a lot, too. Sometimes it’s an email, sometimes it’s a forum post, and sometimes it’s a comment reply. I have a database of snippets that I use in these situations. This allows me to quickly enter text or drop a link without memorizing a URL. When you’re typing all day, saving those extra keystrokes is a huge efficiency boost.

During these conversations, I sometimes need help with a word. And once again Alfred is there to assist. I can pull up the definition, thesaurus, or spellcheck without disrupting my flow of writing. I’ve also installed Webster’s 1913 Dictionary, which I can search right from Alfred. This comes in handy when I’m doing some creative writing and OS X’s thesaurus just doesn’t cut it.

Are there workflows you’ve created or imported that you’d recommend?

There are quite a few! In no particular order, here are some of the ones that I swear by:

Alfred Gist: I often share code snippets with users and coworkers. This workflow allows me to create a Gist that I can share without needing to leave my editor.

Colors: When working with CSS, I often need to convert colors to different formats. The Colors workflow allows me to do just that, and quickly insert the result.

OS X Toolbox: The author of this workflow calls it a “one stop toolkit to fix common annoyances and toggle states in OS X.” Using the ‘tb’ keyword you can relaunch finder, purge inactive memory, and a lot of other helpful system actions.

Todoist: I use Todoist to keep track of my tasks. And of course, there’s a workflow that allows me to automate that process. I bring up Alfred, and type `todo` followed by the task. Then it’s sent directly to my Todoist Inbox and I can file it later.

Rename: This is a powerful one. You can batch rename any number of files in a directory. You can use custom numbering, add dates, use regex, and a whole lot more. I use it a lot when organizing my photos, but it can be used for any filetype.

WordPress Developer Reference: WordPress has an incredible amount of developer documentation. It would be impossible to memorize every function or hook. So I use a workflow to reference them. I have all the documentation at my fingertips, searchable with autocomplete.

A couple of my friends/coworkers have written posts about their favorite workflows, too:

• Clicky Steve: How Alfred Changed (Ruined?) My Life
• Bryan Villarin: Favorite Workflows for Alfred 2

What’s the first feature you show off when you introduce a friend or colleague to Alfred?

That’s a tough call. There are so many cool things that you can do with Alfred, so it’s hard to choose just one. From now on, I think I will just link them to this post.

Alfred has proven to be an invaluable tool. It is productivity and efficiency rolled into one single app. I can’t imagine my day without it!

Thanks Ryan for sharing your thoughts with us, and thanks to Automattic for helping make the web a more interesting place to read!

Don’t Miss A Date with Fantastical 2 and Workflows

The Flexibits team have just released Fantastical 2, updating their already brilliant calendar app.

Fantastical 2 brings a new full calendar application for OS X Yosemite and uses its very useful natural language parsing. This means that you can enter your entry in the same way you’d say it, and Fantastical will make sense of it and create an entry for you.

If, like me, your muscle memory leads you to popping up Alfred anytime your brain wants to make a note, add a calendar entry or a reminder, these few workflows will satisfy your needs once you’ve installed Fantastical 2 on your Mac.

Add a Calendar Entry to Fantastical 2 via Alfred

With Robert Böhnke’s workflow, you can add an Calendar entry by typing “cal” followed by your natural language entry. Fantastical will do the rest of the leg-work to add the entry to your calendar.

Download the workflow on Github

Add Reminders

You can also add Reminders using Jono Hunt’s Reminders workflow. This workflow uses a few keywords to allow you to add the reminder to the most appropriate list, using the same Fantastical natural language parser.

For example, Jono’s workflow allows to to do the following:

• Typing ‘w finish the report’ would add that task to the list named Work.
• Typing ‘r pick up dry cleaning sat at 6:30pm’ would add that task to the list named Reminders with an alert set for 6:30pm on Saturday.
• Typing ‘g milk’ would add that item to the Groceries list.

Alternatively, you can use “+r” as a keyword to see all your lists.

You’ll then get a Notification Centre notice that the item has been added to your Reminders list.

Download the Reminders workflow

Launch F2 using the “calendar” keyword

Workflows don’t get much simpler than this, but a workflow doesn’t have to be complicated to be useful.

Veteran Alfred user Ryan Block contributed this workflow to launch Fantastical 2 using the keyword “calendar”, so that you don’t have to remember the app’s name in order to launch it. Of course, you can top up this workflow with any other useful keywords for your own use.

Download the workflow on Packal.org

With these workflows and Fantastical, you’ll never forget an appointment or task again!